Stronger Loving World

Thursday, August 28, 2003

Hey true believers-I'm in Colorado all this weekend for my sister's engagement. I'm going to wear a well cut Armani suit. I'll be taking pictures. I'll be back on Sunday night. Fix your tie darling you look like a slob. Hike up that dress, sweetheart, I want to see your legs. Excelsior.

Wednesday, August 27, 2003

"Hello, I'm Erica Jong. All of you liked my novel Fear of Flying because in it you met real people. People who loved and suffered and lived. My novel contained real people that's why you liked it. My new novel How to Die Successfully contains those same characters. And it contains two new characters. You and me. All of us are real. Goodbye."

Tuesday, August 19, 2003

SLOUCHING INTO THE MEMEPLEX

Personality is a technology that glosses up or recontextualizes its referent ego. There's no one to one correlation and neither are monolithic. Learning to accept that our personalities are constructed from bits and pieces of cultural information that we find romantic or comforting or just useful as survival tools is important-controlling the pluriform interface of personae takes incredible, labyrinthine self-interrogation and obsessive discipline.

Every step in the process of self-definition and human interaction is part of a game, a series of proccesses and emergent, conflicting structures with no set definition. The constant infighting of the Self is part of a behavioral strategy that the cell(I) performs in order to define itself as part of the body(You). We're all trying to be ourselves and we're all just making new rules to play games in.

The only people that I want to meet from here on in are people who understand how fundamentally fake it is to be human.

Wednesday, August 13, 2003

In the two bedrooms across from mine, someone new moves in every two or three days. Lately, it's been every single day. I've known hotel accomodations with more neighborliness than this. The first person was here for about a week, a law student from Queens named Matt. When he moved out, I introduced myself to the new people, two global study abroad students who would only be around for a few days. Since then, there has been a steady stream of people moving in and out of the bedrooms across from mine every two days. I stopped introducing myself two weeks ago. It's still kind of depressing.

I have two papers to write today. On Friday I'm either going to Belfast or to a Francis Bacon exhibit at a museum on O'Connel Street. Listen to this: When Bacon died, his London studio was presented to the museum as a gift. They got a team of archeologists to graph and map out every single nuance of his incredibly messy studio, from the rolled up notes on the floor to the paint splatters. Then they took it apart and brought it to Dublin piece by fucking piece. Bacon's art resembles a series of discorporated, violently dissolving bodies, so it's interesting that his whole room would be dissected and reassembled. The ultimate autopsy. Or the ultimate Manson-like butchering? How should I know. PIGS! oinkoinkoinkoink

I told some of you that I would be trying to post pictures up here, but I can not post any onto blogger unless I have a paid account (I do not) and I can't post any onto livejournal unless I have a remote host (over here, I don't) So, if you would like photos, e-mail me:churchoftheblues@hotmail.com and I will send you some over the e-mailing machine. Like we used to do in the old days. I got some nice pictures of the hurling match I went to. Hurling is my second favorite sport now, behind Boxing. What is hurling, Roshan? It's like upside down hockey. That sounds dangerous Roshan.

9 AM Wake up. Hung over, drowsy. Fresh from melodramatic and overwrought dreams. Last night I got drunk and wrote into my laptop a letter to God describing our sordid sexual life. Then I free wrote about suicide, for an hour. More on identity dissolution than physical death.

I wake up and remember that I put chicken in the oven last night, turned the oven on, and then fell asleep. I run to see what happened-thankfully, someone turned the oven off. The chicken is tarred black. I go back to bed.

Wake up:10. The head of housekeeping knocks on my door and tells me I put the wrong tray into the oven and “could have burned the place down”. I wince apologetically and return to bed. Thinking: I am a schmuck.

12-1:30 Computer Lab. Brain rest. A scalp rack. No e-mails. Looking through Momus’s old essays, my head is filled with ideas. Reading his War As Fiction essay reminded of the rules of literary narrative; including spatial and temporal representation as they play out in political psychology.

The Sea Horse Liberation Army-Dadaist "guerilla semioticians” a San Fransisco based art group have a confusing website. Manifestos are spliced together into multi lingual jargon. Their sense of visuals are particularly strong. They seem to be able to satirize and caricature fashion trends before they begin.

I write an e-mail to Kristin and one to myself containing ideas for a column I might write. One that deals with “time lapse architecture” one deals with Post satire and another with glitch music. I look at my topics and wonder how I can possibly make them funny.

2:30 PM To my room. I upload some pictures from a floppy disk onto my laptop. I’ve got a few nice shots of Trinity College. On my disk are a few mpegs I don’t remember recording. One features my friend greg and I talking about “vanilla crayons” and then laughing. I have no idea who recorded it or what we are talking about. I save it to my harddrive for good measure.

I take out my camera and begin to snap a few playful pictures of my messy room. In particular, I attempt to graph my interests. I take pictures of some of my books focusing on the ones with pretty covers and names. I find my copy of Pussy, King of the Pirates particularly attractive. I take pictures of a few CDs. Philosophy of Momus (A Pink elephant toy floating in black inkiness) and the new Prefuse 73 record.

Bring my laundry to the launderette. On my way I see a wedding takng place at the chapel on campus. I fantasize about catching the bouquet

The launderette is actually kind of charming and fun to visit. It is in a little walled, sectioned off area past a small card-operated metal gate that makes it feel like an alley. My laundry take 40 minutes to wash and 16 to dry. I spend the time writing what I have done today and get up not once but twice to get change for the machines, which only accept 1 euro or 20 eurocent coins.

5:23 PM Folding my laundry while listening to casiotone for the painfully alone. Sliding detergent I spilled on my bed in the morning into a trash bin with my right hand, I think how I will be when I am living on my own this fall. Casiotone’s lonely low fi pop fills my mood enough that I decide to take it out with me.

Thoughts-A perfectly sculpted world.

6:50 pm Take in a cappuccino on OConnel street while wandering. Debate taking a picture of it. Raw sugar corrupts the surface foam and it suddenly seems imperfect.

Thoughts: how highly toned and formal language hides or glosses up “wit”.

7 30 PM Lower Abbey Street- A woman is screaming “Oh Jesus” and pushing baby carriage. I like the pitch at which she says this. If I could catch up with her I would try to record it.

I walk into Liffey Street Lower and see a bar called “The Prada Bar”. I snap a shot of the wonderful piece of retro advertising above the bar. It resemebles the propaganda chic, in orange and red, of Russian Futurist art experiments. Ironically, a tree limb obscures our view. People are staring at me.

Cross Wellington Quay into Temple Bar Square. Sit down and read The Butcher Boy for a bit. A man from Singapore talks into the payphone in front of me.

I walk towards Grafton street, blow a kiss to a group of girls in a bar through the window who are staring at me. They laugh.

9:59- Upload pictures while listening to highway 61 revisited. The Ballad of a Thin Man is the definitive sonic key for anything I want to write in the next few months. People around me should all be confused as I am. Do you, mr.jones?

11- Spend the next few hours recording poems onto my laptop. One in particular I wrote a few years ago while working from a chemistry lexicon, and it takes me 20 minutes to say it without stumbling on my own words.

Later: Fall asleep sober.

Note: This was actually an atypical day, mainly because I drank absolutely no alcohol and did not enter any kind of pub. Also, the times are completely invented.

Saturday, August 09, 2003

Yesterday, because I was feeling depressed, I took very copious, detailed notation of everything I did from morning till night as I walked around Dublin; including what I was thinking and looking at. I will post that later on, and if you get out a map of Dublin then you can play along as well! It can be like a board game.

Tonight I am going to see Chez Jack L. What is Chez Jack L., Roshan? It is a Jaques Brel tribute show, being performed at a club called Spirit throughout July and August. It is performed by a modern Irish troubador named Jack Lukeman. I love music hall and chanton, so it seems like it will be a blast. I am going to wear a nice velvet shirt and everything.

"roshan- you have probably already noticed this, but i just did, and thought it
was so funny i had to tell you . .. the ad section above your blog is filled
with references to celtic cross jewelry and other such knickknackery. seems like
the ad people search the contents of your blog entries and hope that because you
are in ireland, your friends will want to be supportive and wear celtic jewelry
(that they buy online through the ad from your blog site). or maybe you just
wanted to spread the commercial love around, and hope that when you get back,
each of your pals is religiously clutching their celtic cross pendant with an
amethyst gem inserted in the middle . .. ok i took that way to far. all i meant
to say was that i found it funny that you are in ireland posting about ireland
and the ads on your blog are for celtic stuff . .. go figure. maybe if you
posted about babies, semen and teeth you could get an add for a dentist and a
sperm donation bank. maybe if we made a binge
drinking tribute site we could snag an add from anheuser busch and an AA clinic
in the nyc area . .. -bleh. hope you are enjoying the first days of august. -jZ "